


decent conversation

by bestliars



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Awkward Conversations, M/M, Minnesota Wild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 11:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3766813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/pseuds/bestliars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>after morning skate, Jonas sits down next to him, and says, “Your hair looks sad.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	decent conversation

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Bess for beta reading this <3

Marco is so ready to get back to playing games. Hurting his knee sucked, but it’s better now. He has to admit, the timing was convenient. He went down right before the Olympic break, so he was only missing vacation while he rehabbed, not games that actually mattered. He wasn’t quite ready for the first game after break, but he is now, one-hundred percent ready, and excited to play.

So excited, and so tired. He couldn’t sleep well the night before, but he’s gonna nap before the game, so it’ll be fine. But right now he’s definitely tired, and maybe not processing at full speed — or at least that seems like a reasonable excuse.

Anyway, after morning skate, Jonas sits down next to him, and says, “Your hair looks sad.”

That’s a weird thing to say. At first he wonders if it’s a language barrier thing, but no, he’s pretty sure that’s what Jonas meant to say. Jonas is a weird kid, but they’re playing together now, and he’s a great player, so it doesn’t really matter if he’s weird. Marco can deal with weird.

“Oh yeah? Why do you say that?” Marco asks. He doesn’t think his hair looks ‘sad.’ Kinda messy, and it’s getting too long, but not _sad._ That’s a weird thing to say.

Jonas shrugs. “Don’t know. It just looks sad. Are you sad?”

Is this Jonas trying to talk about their feelings? Is that a thing that happens? Would he start by making comments about Marco’s hair? Does Jonas have feelings that can be talked about? Marco really isn’t sure. He just doesn’t know. Marco isn’t sad though, he can answer that. “No, I’m really excited to play, just kind of tired. How are you?”

Jonas shrugs off the question, which is basically what Marco expected. “Did you see Spurg’s black eye?” Jonas asks.

Marco nods. Maybe they’re making obvious comments about people’s appearances. Marco’s hair is sad. Spurg has a black eye. Granny should cut his hair. Darcy is very tall. Etc, etc. “Yeah, I was there when he got it, did you hear about it how it happened?”

Jonas shakes his head. “We were playing ministicks, and Zach clunked him in the face. It was kind of awesome, especially cause Spurg’s team still lost.” Zach likes to be on a team with Marco, because Marco’s tall and his parents aren’t. Four-year-olds are good company.

Jonas smiles. That’s good. Marco still doesn’t really know what to say next.

“We played a lot of floor hockey over break. We may have gotten a little bit carried away. It’s a good thing there was only the one injury.” And the thing with the ugly vase Dani got from her great aunt, but semi-planned destruction isn’t really an injury, just an awesome way to spend a cold winter afternoon. “Did you have a good time in OKC?”

Jonas nods once, then bites his lip. Marco wonders if this is what the whole not-conversation-do-you-have-sad-hair-whatever is all about. Maybe. He’s going to be patient, and hope Jonas says something.

“It was good to see Oscar,” is what Jonas eventually says. Marco’s sure that’s true, but that doesn’t sound like the whole story.

“Yeah, friends are important,” Marco says. He has awesome friends, who put up with him complaining about his knee all break. He doesn’t mind that they bullied him into watching their kid so they could go on dates, because they also watched a lot of 90s Disney movies, and it was amazing. So Marco totally understands how great it must have been for Jonas to spend some time with his best friend, who’s known him forever, and reminds him of home. Friendship is magic. (Dani and Zach are kind of into _My Little Pony,_ and Marco may have been too lazy to leave the room to avoid it. Also, it’s adorable.)

“Yeah. Oscar’s a friend. And he’s, like. Very important, a friend and.”

Huh. That didn’t make a ton of sense. Like, the words themselves didn’t, there wasn’t a whole sentence there. Marco could make guesses about some of the _and_ that Jonas isn’t saying, but he’d rather not, he’d rather just have Jonas say it.

Marco’s going to be patient and wait for Jonas to continue the conversation. Time passes. Marco isn’t sure how long, he isn’t looking at a clock, but it feels like a long time. Marco isn’t good at being patient.

Okay. How does he even do this? How can he get Jonas Brodin to talk about feelings he may or may not be having? It’s a challenge.

Marco thinks about it, and realizes that the best course of action may be using Jonas’s own way of thinking about the world. It doesn’t really make sense to Marco, but apparently it does to Jonas, so it’s worth a shot anyway. “Yeah, when you came back from visiting Oscar your hair looked really happy.”

That’s never a sentence Marco thought he would say. He’s still having a hard time believing that this is his life and this is a conversation that they’re having, but apparently...

“Yes, it was — I mean, yes, I was. Very happy. Because Oscar is.”

Is happy? Is your boyfriend? Has great hair? Marco just isn’t sure. He sighs.

“Jonas, you know you can tell me things, right?”

Marco’s tired. He wants to go home and nap, and then come back, and play hockey and then go home and sleep more. His life is really exciting. No, really, it is, especially the part where they’re talking about their feelings.

“I know. But I usually don’t, and...”

“It’s weird, yeah, I know.”

Jonas nods in agreement.

“So you had a great time in OKC with Oscar, who’s not just your best friend, right?”

Jonas nods.

“When did you start dating?” Marco asks. There’s a point when it pays to be blunt, when pretending that they’re not talking about what they’re talking about becomes completely useless. They basically were at this point when the conversation started, because it’s awfully useless to speculate if Marco’s hair _looks sad_ or not. It’s good to finally break free.

“Um.” Jonas is blushing. It’s so cute, Marco almost wants to die so Jonas doesn’t have to keep talking. “Kind of when we were sixteen? That’s when it started, but then we stopped — distance and stuff — but then we figured it out again over the break.”

“Aw, that’s great Brods. I’m really happy for you,” Marco says.

Jonas is looking away, still very pink.

“I really need to get home now, but if you ever want to talk, I’m here for it, yeah?”

Jonas nods.

Great talk.

“If you decide to tell Spurg I know he’d have a lot of advice about the long distance thing, or it’s cool if you keep it to yourself.”

“Do you want to tell him?” Jonas asks.

Um. “If you want me to?”

“I don’t mind people knowing, not really, but I’m...”

“Not very good at actually saying anything,” Marco fills in the rest of the sentence.

“Yeah, that.”

Marco kind of wonders how Jonas manages to have a boyfriend if he’s this incapable of saying shit, but it must be different with Oscar. They’ve known each other for such a long time, and there isn’t the language barrier, that’s certainly important.

“I can talk to Spurg for you. I’m sure he’s going to be really happy for you too.”

Jonas nods, and smiles.

Marco smiles back.

“Okay, now I really need to go home. But I’m really glad you have someone special you can talk to,” Marco says.

And that’s it. Marco goes home, naps. Comes back to the rink, gets ready. He talks to Jonas about hockey, but not feelings. They beat the Flames. Things are the way they are supposed to be.

They’re going out as a team after that, celebrating the first game on home ice since the break, and five straight wins. He’s getting ready to go, and finds himself wondering, does his hair look sad? Is it possible, that underneath all the bullshit of emotions and bad communication, there could be a real point? What does it even mean to have sad hair? He still doesn’t know.

Fuck it. It’s February, he’s wearing a hat.

**Author's Note:**

> here's the sad hair that was my inspiration: http://video.wild.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=566431


End file.
